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Lore News That You Can Use

My name is Eserine. A while ago I announced in disgust that I was finished participating in the lore forums, but I have returned to deliver a bit of important news to the frustrated players who still frequent this forum section as a sort of an update on Riot's activity, to those who may not follow the DevTracker every day or read Riot's press disclosures across the web.

News Number One:

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Ezreal:

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oddish33:

Are you the main designer on any champs right now? If not, then what are you doing at riot right now?

Well, I transitioned from designing individual champions to leading the champion ideation process (initial art/design/theme) some time after releasing Ahri. Recently I have also joined the Creative Design team in coming up with awesome new ways to integrate lore into our game (GIVE ME IDEAS HERE!!!).

To those who hate trying to use this forum in an attempt to interact with the apathetic lore team, Riot Ezreal has recently joined the Creative Design Team, and he is using his gigantic AMA thread in GD (with 100% response rate) to solicit particularly clever or hilarious ideas about incorporating the lore into the game itself.

> What champion interactions would you like to see between characters?

> What new "missions" similar to Kha'zix and Rengar's would best illustrate important lore ideas?

> If Riot developed the capability to superimpose different map features according to the champion you have selected (ie. part of the trees on Summoner's Rift being on fire if you play Brand), what different doodads would you like to see incorporated for different champions on the maps? Might any of these hold the potential impact to reveal something astonishing about a champion given the psychological experience of a summoner merging minds together with a champion based on what they individually might notice or hallucinate? What about the now-black out of bounds fields surrounding the map?

> What lore-related achievements with the achievement tab do you envision?

> What loading-screen tooltip customizations would you make in terms of revealing champion lore?

> What user-interface alterations might reveal lore (easter-egg changes in the game client after using different champions, or altered in-game features [ie. Garen's teammate icon having a red-marker mustache and top hat drawn on when playing as Lux]) might you want to see?

> If Riot were to ever improve the forums again, how might that change according to frequently played or last played champions?

> etc.

I should mention that throughout Ezreal's thread he generally makes many promises to players about incorporating specific ideas or features at some point in the future and then not doing it for many years or likely ever (like adding better racial representation to the character roster), but you may at least receive feedback on your thoughts instead of being left here to essentially write to yourself about lore ideas.

News Number Two:

Or will you be left left here to essentially write to yourself about lore ideas? As players have grown increasingly dismayed about the declining state of the lore under Kitae and her current writers, the artist IronStylus, as one of the only frequent forum posters, has begun to talk with players about the lore in the General Discussion section, and even about the lore forums

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IronStylus:

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NotBuzzJack;32976793:

Ironstylus, how active is the lore team on their respective forum? Because there's many discussions we would love to have with them, such as the conflict between Ionia and its dark side (ie: Varus, Zed).

They've got their hands full with the aforementioned investment, but I think fairly active.

Runaan and Harrow like to get all up in there. I work with them a lot.

...I have a feeling you might see me take up a nest in there as well relatively soon.

at some point in the future then this forum may be aglow with new debate, likely centering mostly around the lives of Leona and Diana and Vi. One imagines a great deal of IronStylus writing to players "Wow, I'll talk to Runan and Harrow about that", and then never hearing about the given subject again. Qualitatively though expect massive improvements in feedback, here is an excerpt from the Vi AMA with Harrow yesterday:

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Harrow:

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Zerglinator;33284068:

What does Vi think of Orianna?

- Uh, weird, weird robot girl thing.

If one looks closely at Vi's primary splash art one notices that Vi wears a corset, and a pink tutu beneath her clothing, suggesting in visual symbolism that below Vi's gruff and kickass exterior she secretly longs to be a beautiful, thin, and delicate ballerina, as Orianna was built to embody precisely (indeed not even having a torso), so Vi may in fact look upon Orianna with an intense longing and jealousy, not for her shape, but for the love that Orianna's father felt so strongly for his daughter that he permanently attempted to capture her vulnerable and feminine essence, a love that Vi feels that she may never inspire in life being a rough-edged hardknock street urchin. While this is a disturbing anti-feminist portrayal of Riot's purported "badass female champion", it illustrates a depth of character creation that seems totally beyond anyone in charge of the storytelling side of the game.

If you read through IronsStylus' comments in the two threads linked above we reach the final and perhaps most significant news:

News Number Three:

Many at Riot have alluded to a secret and time-consuming lore project for a long time now nearing release (http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=33330985#33330985) or critical mass, which I have in the past called "Project X". Should nothing be issued in the coming months to follow however it becomes increasingly plausible that the secret project that the lore department are working on instead of a new format may actually be another game, coyly disavowed in an October interview with Pres. Tryndamere:

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At some point, though, sooner or later, League of Legends will reach the maximum number of addressable players, right? "Every month our audience continues to grow, so it hasn't stopped yet," said Merrill. "We continue to develop our audience worldwide, gaining expertise with different markets." That's fine for now, but eventually the League of Legends audience will stop growing. What then? How does the company grow from that point? "We want to make the 's' in Riot Games mean something," noted Merrill. "We feel our direct distribution and our connection to customers, along with our experience around the world, is a very powerful asset we intend to capitalize on when it makes sense."

As usual, Merrill wouldn't be more specific about plans for future games. Riot does recognize the deep desire of fans to know more about what the company has planned. "Soon," Merrill said. "You just have to say that. We are working on so many different things. We feel the pressure from fans, but we want to release things when they are ready."

I personally find this concept horrifying, and I hope where Tryndamere mentions elsewhere in the interview his faith in continuing to grow the game and add many more champions that Project X is something else related to hiring lots of new writers from the television industry and going dark for months at a time.

Instead of some sort of brilliant, huge, and witty text-only choose-you-own adventure game Riot would likely aim for something closer to the World-of-Warcraft-killer MMORPG envisioned by the author Neal Stephenson in his recent book "REAMDE". Interestingly (as a modern commentary on fantasy writing) this book pits two lore-writer characters against one another early on in a massive power struggle that begins to take over the game and world economy, one, Donald Cameron, who carefully crafts every aspect of the imagined universe with a great deal of intelligence, attention, and originality (based on J.R.R. Tolkien) and one, Devin Skraelin (Devon Giehl?), who senselessly and tastelessly plagiarizes and spits out endless reams of terrible pulp-fic in the manner of Riot and many other modern games (throwing apostrophes into names, or world-shaking major events whenever it "sounds cool" at great damage to the storytelling). Entertainingly the Tolkien character and the primary protagonist make reference to the importance of game narrative through the analogy of the writing-quill framing player experience as the empennage (guiding feathers) of an arrow, which certainly doesn't match with Riot's priorities given their recent activity, and further discussion goes on in this subject with the Tolkien character insisting that all changes to canon or the gameworld be explained rationally with storytelling adhering to established ideas (instead of just thrown aside like a comic book would do), and another character even ruminating on the common tech. industry saying "A's hire A's, B's hire C's", which immediately brings to mind the refusal of the Riot lore team to entertain criticism or challenge to their ideas in favor of loyalty to the team leaders instead of the quality of the writing.

Anyhow, I am once again leaving this forum and will not be responding to this thread, but you can reach me through my GD thread on preseason feedback (http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=2813286) throughout the pre-season period if you would like to chat, or you can read about why I find this forum to be pointless or call me incredibly rude here (http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=2652320)! DISCLAIMER: I will not read that thread and I do not care if you think that I am rude.

That was a nice read... and trust me, you're not the only one that is closely following Riot's actions, when it comes to their storyline and general Lore. Ten months, it has been, since the closure of the JoJ and the Judgements and, well, I'm still hoping. Afterall, our dear Ezreal said "2013 will be a good year for lore!"
Yeah, I know he won't be reading this, but I feel like he made good points, cleverly hidden behind walls of text and unnecessary points. LET'S DO IT RIOT, PROJECT X WHEN? (Also Battlecast Skarner, when?)